Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Release Date: July 18th!

[Rickton]

Crossposted from my site

I'm going to preface this by saying that work on the user interface is probably my least favorite kind of programming. It's tedious and boring, and doesn't feel very productive. But once it's done, it makes a world of difference. Since the first Possession was whipped together in a week, it didn't have that much polish, though I think it was pretty good for being made in only 7 days. I'd like Possession 2 to be much more accessible, better-looking, and playable, though, so I've been doing some work towards that end.

The sidebars used to just be drawn as a simple square. I whipped up a border to use instead, and also made it adjust based on how much information needs to be shown rather than just taking up the entire side of the screen. It also shows you the special abilities you can use in your current body, and you can now press the number listed to use that ability instead of having to go through the spell screen.


Click to enlarge

One thing you can see in that picture is something entirely new: A menu that shows up when you right click on an enemy or square. It lists the abilities you can use on the targeted location, which means that the game can now be played entirely with the mouse, if you want. (Actually, that's not completely true yet, you still have to use the keyboard to go up and down stairs).

Another other thing I've been working on is changing the stat system of the game. In Possession 1, every creature had a "Hit Chance" and a "Dodge Chance. But what made things confusing is that the actual hit chance was the "Hit Chance" of the attacker minus the "Dodge Chance" of the defender, so a 50% hit chance could in reality be, say, a 10% hit chance if the attacker had a high dodge score. This also led to silliness like some creatures having a 120% hit chance. I've gotten rid of that, and just gone to a basic "hit skill" and "dodge skill" system. Since those numbers aren't quite as intuitive as hit chances, the game now shows you the chance of hitting (or being hit by) an enemy when you target them.


Click to enlarge

Here's what the Monsterpedia, which contains information about the monsters you're possessed, looks like now. In the first game, it was just kind of a jumble, the creatures were just listed in there based on which ones you possessed first, but now they're sorted by level, and the list is scrollable. It also tracks your stats with the individual creatures, showing how many times you're possessed a creature type, how many times you've exploded one, as well as how many kills you're made and turns you've played as a creature.


Click to enlarge

I'd like to get some feedback on all these interface changes, which is hard to do without people actually playing with them. Luckily, it actually looks like the game's going to be in a stable enough state (though still nowhere near finished, content-wise) to release a playable dev version soon. And by soon I mean "hopefully this week." So stay tuned for that.

[Rickton]

So I've finally got a playable version up! Still very in progress, obviously. Some things have missing/incomplete graphics, some features aren’t implemented yet, and there’s still a lot of balancing to be done. But you can try it out and see how you like it, and please let me know how you do!

Mac Version

.love file

Windows version coming, but I need to get on my girlfriend's computer to test it.

[Rickton]

Saw someone ran into a crash (was using StackMachine), so I fixed it. Unfortunately, StackMachine thinks it's a 0.8.0 game, so when I uploaded the new version, it caused playing the game to auto-update to a version using 0.8.0, which doesn't work. Sorry about that. For the time being, I've disconnected it from StackMachine, if you have or had problems, the download links are fixed to a working version (with the original crash fixed).

[Rickton]

Windows Version now available.

[ejmr]

I love this genre, so I just wanted to say thank you for sharing the game and keep up the great work!

[Rickton]

I love this genre, so I just wanted to say thank you for sharing the game and keep up the great work!

You're welcome, and thank you, I will.

[Rickton]

It's been a while since my last devblog (to put it lightly). Content progress has continued, and I'm sure I'll get into some of that later. But what I've also been doing (continuing somewhat the theme of the last devblog), is working on adding some polish to the game.

Maybe that's a bad idea, maybe you shouldn't polish a game until it's finished. I don't know how you're "supposed" to do things like this. Psychologically, though, it's been helpful for me, because it makes the game look more like an actual game people might play rather than some hacked-together piece of crap. It'll also make for better screenshots, and a more enjoyable dev release, whenever the next one comes.

The fact of the matter is, as inconsequential as some of these types of features might be, they're essential to people wanting to play the game. No matter how good the gameplay is, if it feels and looks off, it's going to turn people off. Little features like these go a long way:

First, and most usefully, abilities with areas of effect now show where the effect is going to be:


Targeting poison gas attack


Poison gas attack result

Not as essential, but probably still useful thing is making damage more visible. The old dev version did have numbers that rose from a creature showing how much damage was done, but now I've also made them flash and get knocked back a bit when they get hit.


Damage knockbacks and flashes

Special damage types also have animations that flash over a creature who's been damaged:


Unholy damage

The game now warns you when you're about to move into a dangerous area (ie lava if you can't fly, or next to a creature if you're a ghost). This should hopefully cut down on annoying accidental deaths caused by running too fast without paying attention.


Never stand next to an elvish environmentalist...that all-natural deodorant doesn't work too well.


I don't see why I wouldn't be sure.

Purely cosmetic, there's a small animation when a walking creature, well, walks:


A leisurely stroll.

And graphics for certain features, such as splashes that show up when they go into the water (or sewage, as the case may be), and making it look like they're actually standing on a bridge instead of on the side of it.


The ratking and ugly vampire have a nice chat while standing in sewage.


The ghost has no friends to chat with in the sewage, and also doesn't make any splashes because it flies.


On the bridge over the river of the dead. Who's that mysterious stranger on the left?

Oh also, corpses finally show up in graphics mode, instead of just as colored % signs.


Before...


...after.

[Rickton]

Crossposted from my site

Well, it's been a month since the last post, but the past month has been pretty busy life-wise, first I was out of town, then had people coming in from out of town to stay with me, then out of town again. So that's my excuse.

Anyway, one major piece of news is that the tombs are officially finished, which basically means that I told myself I wasn't allowed to work on them anymore. The tombs tileset has all the graphics done, all its creatures are done, and it has a unique boss. This shot shows him, and a new creature from the tombs that hasn't been shown before, the pyramidologist.


Tombs boss, and Pyramidologist creature.

All of the special levels up until now have just used the regular map gen code, with some special rules applied on top. For the newest special level, the Adventurer's Tavern, I wrote a brand new map generator.


The #s are beds, they just don't have graphics yet.

I'm sure people have done something like this before, but here's a description of how it works, in case it inspires anyone to use something like it.

First, you split the level into a grid of equal-sized squares. Since right now my levels are 50x50 tiles, I'm splitting it into a 5x5 grid of squares each 10x10 tiles.



Then, it picks a random side, and makes all the rooms on that side "barrooms", that will contain the exit. Then, it picks a random room one up from the other side, that'll be a "storeroom" and contain the entrance.


It puts a couple more storerooms in there for good measure, too, but whatever.

Then it puts hallways in all the empty rooms, and puts bedrooms in the empty space, resulting in a final result that looks like this (in ASCII mode to show more of the level):



I won't go into full details on all the creatures in the tavern (partially because none of them are fully coded yet) but I will leave this guy here:




Some other creatures I've implemented are:



The blood mage, who I think would make a pretty interesting class in a "normal" roguelike or RPG. He has some powerful spells that let him decrease how much damage he takes and deal a lot of damage to the enemy, but to cast them, he has to sacrifice his own health points.



Kobold protestors, who are weak and scrawny, but throw molotov cocktails, and can blame a nearby creature for their troubles, causing other nearby kobold protestors to attack them.



Unicorns that shoot rainbow death lasers at sasquatches and big game hunters.

[Germanunkol]

The #s are beds, they just don't have graphics yet.

Looking nice! Lots of progress.

In the quoted image, I find it very hard to read the map - the ground looks way too much like a brick wall.
At first I thought it was inverted and the walls were actually ground you could walk on. If you change the brown-ish texture, that would help a lot...

[kikito]

I find it very hard to read the map - the ground looks way too much like a brick wall.

I agree. I am no graphics expert, but I think the problem is that the floor tile has more contrast than the wall. I believe it's usually the opposite.

Other than that, this looks very rad